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Meat Cake

A baked meat cake made from beef, veal, bacon, ham, and herbs, served with savory jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Meat Cake

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Meat Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the fillet from the inside of a rump of beef into small pieces and pound with some lean veal in a mortar.

  2. Add lemon juice, pepper, coarse sea salt, parsley, basil, thyme, mushrooms, savory, shallots, beaten spices, and enough egg yolks to bind the mixture.

  3. Mix in diced fat bacon and lean ham with your hands.

Mould and bake

  1. Line a stewpan or mold with strips of fat bacon, fill it with the mixture, and press it down.

  2. Top with bay leaves and a little Rhenish wine, then cover with more bacon strips.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until thoroughly cooked.

Serve

  1. Once cold, turn it out of the mold, trim it clean, and serve on a dish with chopped savory jelly around it.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Basil + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Lemon + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rump of beef
Forms the main body of the cake and gives it a meaty, firm texture.
Egg yolks
Bind the minced mixture so it holds together when cooked and sliced.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the lean meat from drying out as it bakes.
Lean veal
Adds a tender, delicate texture to the pounded meat base.
Lean ham
Contributes savoury, salty flavour and a firmer bite throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake until thoroughly cooked. The dense meat mixture must reach a safe internal temperature all the way through. Moderate, steady oven heat cooks the centre without drying or toughening the outer layers.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, lemon, pepper, parsley, thyme, mushroom):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Winter savoryfits about as well
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, lemon, pepper, parsley, thyme, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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